Find laughter in every day

An odd thing happened to me yesterday. Ordinary as days can be, this was just another one of those, only difference was the taxi I got into. Happy Thursday! Said a smiling Sikh driver behind the wheel while I fumbled with my luggage and tried to sit down and not get the belt of my coat jammed in the door. Hi, I said and told him where I needed to go. Great, he said and started the engine, pulling out of the taxi rank.

You know, he said, staring at the traffic jam building up ahead of him, life is just too short to be miserable. I enthusiastically agreed and wondered where this conversation would take me. See, he continued, you have to find laughter in every day. If you don’t the world is just too much to deal with sometimes. This made me think that the recent bout of stress and work had made me forget this very simple but important point. I agreed with him again, and said that he must have come across some amazing stories from all the people he has been driving around in his years as a taxi driver.

He laughed and told me that he had indeed done some driving in his time, and that he was now over 70. This astonished me as he really didn’t look a day over fifty. Staggering I thought and rushed to tell him so, what’s your secret? I then asked. I walk three miles every day, I don’t eat junk food and I go to bed and get up the same time every day. Jealous, I told him I wish I could do the same. Too much travel, different time zones and crazy flights mean that I don’t think I very often go to bed at the same time at all, although I really do need my sleep and feel like a new person whenever I have managed to squeeze in eight hours or more. Don’t worry he said – if you worry about it, it will just be worse, he added. The important thing is to find laughter in every day. That is The simplest but biggest difference you can make for yourself and for others. When you smile the world smiles with you, when you laugh you kill the tension of the unspoken.